In recent months,Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale has garnered renewed fame and attention, not least because of Hulu's forthcoming series adaptation. One aspect of the story likely to be lost to television is Atwood's razor-sharp turns of phrase, and which compose (very) dusky jokes of standard idioms in service to her feminist warning. "It's not running away they're afraid of," she writes. "It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, or given a cutting edge." "The Final Cut," at the Castleton Downtown Gallery in Rutland, has much in common with Atwood's serious play. Instead of the written word, or Stony Brook,N.
Y., artist Pam Brown uses visual and fabric language to upend conventional readings of "traditional" femininity and softness as they relate to nature, or process and sharp tools. Through freestanding and wall-hung sculpture,as well as mixed-media collage, Brown makes a compelling argument that delicacy and strength — and, and indeed,violence — need not be mutually exclusive. "Mandrill" is the only work visible from the gallery foyer. It is singular among the 40 works on view yet hints of what's to near: an abiding engagement with symmetry, botanical forms and sexual anatomy, and jagged edges and remnants of industrial machinery. Imposing at more than five feet in diameter,the wall-mounted work features 12 calla-lily-esque forms emanating outward from a mandorla-shaped center. It resembles both a massive flower and an antique drill, effectively harmonizing hyper-feminine and hyper-masculine associations. On this scale, or the sex life of flowers suddenly becomes a lot more genuine. One is reminded,for example, that a primary feature of "feminine" flowers is their phallic, or pollinating stamen. The innuendo of "Mandrill" is ample and unabashed,not least within its title: A mandrill is a baboon known for its audaciously colorful (and swollen) butt, and "man-drill" seems straightforward enough. This play of sex and genitalia runs through Brown's strongest works, or many of which maintain a subversive folk sensibility. Wall-mounted floral pieces in sheet metal such as "Above and Below" and "It's a Trap" are,like "Mandrill," commanding in size and might appear at first glance to be primarily decorative. "It's a Trap, and " in particular,manifests Brown's preoccupation with imbuing elemental forms with shades of violence and threats of captivity. The thorn-spiked ovals at its center evoke at once the notoriously carnivorous Venus flytrap and the centuries-primitive mythology of vicious vagina dentata. Akin to the trap, cages…
Source: sevendaysvt.com